The Written World

Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis

Amanda Jane Hingst

Publication Year: 2009

The Anglo-Norman monk Orderic Vitalis (1075-c.1142) wrote his monumental, highly individual Historia Ecclesiastica as an exercise in monastic discipline intended to preserve the events and character of Christendom for future generations. Though cloistered since childhood in a Benedictine monastery near Normandy's southern border, Orderic gained access to an intellectual world that extended from Scotland to Jerusalem through his engagement with texts and travelers that made their way into his monastic milieu. His Historia Ecclesiastica, with a breadth of vision unparalleled in its time, is a particularly fertile source for an investigation of concepts of space and historiography in the high Middle Ages. In The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis, Amanda Jane Hingst draws on the blend of intellectual intimacy and historiographical breadth in Orderic's writings to investigate the ways in which high medieval historians understood geographical space to be a temporally meaningful framework for human affairs. Hingst explores Orderic's manipulation of the classical geographical tradition, his balancing of spatial scale between the local and the universal, and his sophisticated and original utilization of the new intellectual currents of the twelfth century. She argues that Orderic, along with some of his contemporaries, interpreted Christendom's terrain not merely as a static stage for human action but as a meaningful element in human history. Using a theoretical framework marrying modern spatial theory with medieval philosophical traditions, Hingst suggests that, at its most nuanced, medieval historiography affirmed the symbolic topography of Christendom by linking history and geography in such a way that they mutually forged and reinforced each other. With a clarity of style and ideas, Hingst makes available to both students and trained scholars a fascinating account of a heretofore underappreciated medieval figure and his work.

Cover

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Monks, Orderic Vitalis said, need only two things to survive: wood
and water. Historians need three: money, books, and friends. The
first was provided by a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department
of Education, which supported four years of my graduate
study, ...

Prologue

“In the year of our Lord 1118, on the vigil of the birth of the Lord,
a violent gale leveled many buildings and woods in western regions,”
the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman monk and historian Orderic
Vitalis opened the twelfth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica. He immediately
went on. ...

Ouche: The History of a Place

Normandy’s characteristic rolling hills grow more pronounced in
the Pays d’Ouche. The peaks there are more panoramic, the valleys
more thoroughly folded away. Set along the border where in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the duchy of Normandy collided,
often violently, with the county of Maine, ...

Classical Geography and the Gens Normannorum

Orderic Vitalis was well versed in the writings of the historians
who came before him. The library at Ouche possessed the works of
“Isidore, Eusebius, and Orosius,” Orderic said, whose compositions
“beneficially encouraged the young men pursuing similar studies.”1 ...

At Sea

The Norman world at its height offered a geographic doubling: Normandy
at the northwestern edge of the European mainland, linked
to the island of England across the Channel; and Apulia and Calabria
near the southwestern corner of the continent, joined with the island
of Sicily across the Strait of Messina. ...

Albion: Conquest, Hegemony, and the English Past

The Norman conquest of England was audacious, stunning, and
amazingly quick.1 Edward the Confessor, the childless king of England,
was buried in the newly consecrated abbey church at Westminster
on Thursday, 6 January 1066.2 On the same day Harold Godwinson,
earl of Essex ...

Jerusalem and the Ends of the Earth

Alongside the year 1099 in the annals of the monastery of Ouche,
Orderic Vitalis (who kept this chronological record for much of his
adult life) noted three events: “Jerusalem was taken on 15 July by
the holy pilgrims, the heathens who had held it for a long time having
been conquered. ...

Haunted Landscapes

“I reckon,” Orderic Vitalis reflected in the mid-1130s, “that I must
not neglect or keep silent about something that happened to a certain
presbyter from the diocese of Lisieux on 1 January” in 1091.
The story that follows is one of the most famous passages in the entire
Historia Ecclesiastica.1 ...

Historians, Heretics, and the Body of Christ

On 29 August 1070, four years after Normandy’s William the Bastard
crossed the Channel and conquered England, the scholar and administrator
Lanfranc, formerly abbot of St. Stephen’s in Caen, was
consecrated archbishop of Canterbury.1 The previous prelate, Stigand,
had been deposed the April before, ...

Epilogue

“The time of Antichrist draws near,” Orderic Vitalis wrote in 1127
in a mid-work dedication to his abbot and friend, Warin des Essarts,
“whose form, as the Lord made known to the blessed Job, will be
preceded by a lack of miracles, and a great frenzy of vices will proceed
from those who take pleasure in their own carnal delights.”1 ...

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